


Stepping Stone

by Alona



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: Gen, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 02:03:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alona/pseuds/Alona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which a young Adelle DeWitt goes to work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stepping Stone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Poetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/gifts).



Another day, another taxi, another pant suit. She is sick to death of pant suits and severe button-downs and waiting for her hair to grow back. She sees the value of her current position; further, she appreciates it. It is not the job she thought a bioethics doctorate would get her, but she feels that it is the start of a glorious career with Rossum. Still, she has learned all she can or needs to from it in the past six months, and she's ready to face the future.

The future is dragging its feet.

A month after she started the job, Adelle DeWitt cut her hair and bought four pant suits. The first time a client mistook her for an Active herself, she was naïve enough to be flattered. Thinking of herself as being that naïve, that young, is strange now, though little enough time has passed. The pant suits came in when she complained to Jessica Winter, the sole other female handler.

"Of course that's what they'll think," said Winter, who was at least a decade Adelle's senior and, Adelle had heard, a former marine. "Look at how you dress."

"I beg your pardon," Adelle started angrily.

"Don't get so excited. I’m just saying, you dress like you know you're a woman and expect it not to be a big deal to other people. If you think about our clientele for a second, you'll see what’s wrong with expecting _that_."

Adelle favored her with a cold glare and went about her business. Two days later, she spent her second paycheck on suits. She took to carrying the battered leather briefcase that had been her father’s going away present. At first she had resented it, taking it as another expression of his inability to accept, twenty-five years later, the fact that his only child was a daughter and not a son. Now she values it for what it is: another part of her armor against men like him.

All but two inches of her hair were sacrificed to the same cause, in theory. In practice, Adelle thought it was an expression of belated mourning for her relationship with Oliver. She took the job because it was the job she wanted, but it had been no small bonus to be able to put an ocean between her and the man who had, if not quite broken, at least seriously wounded her heart.

Five months later, she is still wrestling with hair grips and headbands. Clients, especially the regulars, have learned to respect her as she deserves.

 

Adelle climbs out of her cab at the corner of Park and 89th. When the cab has driven away, she ducks into an old mansion, its walls high and ivy-choked, its grounds unexpectedly spacious, in her estimation of Manhattan.

Above ground, the building is a museum of records so dull it attracts only a smattering of enthusiasts each day. The offices, for security purposes, are on the first basement level. The true heart of the agency is lower still.

As Adelle walks to her own dank cubby hole, she passes Matthew Harding, founding head of the New York Dollhouse. He smiles and winks at her. He likes to say to her, when as many men as possible are around to hear it, "You can go so far with me, Addie."

"Good morning, Mr. Harding," she murmurs, and imagines punching him in his smug, lecherous face.

 

On her way down to the lab, she passes Amsterdam and LaFayette, who are sitting on the landing and playing tiddlywinks by the scant light of a single bulb. Amsterdam looks up, smiling all over her little heart-shaped face.

“Good morning, Adelle,” she simpers. “It’s a nice day.”

LaFayette, after failing to launch one of his winks, adds something equally inane.

“Indeed,” says Adelle, not stopping. She feels a stab of guilt, but what can she say to any of them when they’re like this? Children, who are at least programmed to learn, are difficult enough for her.

In the innermost room of the lab, Madison is undergoing her treatment. By the technician’s degree of exhaustion, Adelle judges that it has gone on for at least three hours, and is therefore nearing completion.

The technician, eyes glued to a computer screen, doesn’t look up when she enters. After she has stood in the doorway for five minutes, flipping over the engagement summary she brought down from her office, he says, “I didn’t see you there, Ms. DeWitt.”

“No,” she agrees. “Is Madison ready?”

In reply, the young woman on the table hops up. Wiping sweat off her brow, she says, “What kind of a place is this? Who’s taking me to see Henry?”

“I am, Virginia,” says Adelle, after consulting the summary. “Come, let’s get you dressed.”

Madison looks down and, as though noticing her barely clad state for the first time, says, “Oh, heck. Looks like we’d better.” She looks distraught. Adelle has asked and asked again why a more natural transition can’t be programmed into these personalities, and has rejected as absurd the excuse that it would overtax the system. When she is in change —that she will be is a question only of time — she will find someone to do it better. A lot of things will change when Adelle is in charge.

Handing Madison a robe, she says, “Let’s go. I’ll take care of you.”

“You always do,” says Madison, looking straight at Adelle, who, even now, feels a stir of pity. She consoles herself, as always, with the knowledge that the circumstances Madison left were far, far worse.

 

An hour later, their van pulls into the driveway of what looks like someone’s idea of a woodland cottage. Set two car-lengths back from the street, a stone chimney coming up from its faux-thatch roof, the house is astoundingly out of place and dowdy between its two sensible brownstone neighbors.

Madison goes on her way, not without a slew of hearty gratitude. Adelle accepts it stoically. She wishes she could feel that it was deserved.

Once Madison has rung the doorbell and been invited in by a nervously delighted little man, Adelle settles in for a long wait. Imprints are guaranteed for six hours, fairly reliable for another two in most cases. She’ll have enough time to wade through her backlog of paperwork and fit in a chunk of the latest issue of her favorite bioethics journal.

And if she squeezes in a glance at the Bloomingdale’s catalogue she tucked into the outside pocket of her briefcase last night, well, that’s only another investment for the future.


End file.
